Plot Summary:

Olga Vujadinović and Ljubiša Samardžić

Far from the realism in style in Yugoslav films from the sixties, Alexander Petrovic connects people’s individuality to their psychologica lconflicts, eroticism, and poetic discourse. This intimate film is a meditation about solitude broken by a brief meeting between a married woman and a student.

Press excerpts:

“Petrovic not only knows how to lead adventures, accumulate “signs,” or incessantly show “the other side of things,” he is also an exceptional talent, penetrating, in describing “the voices,” the alternatives. In reducing the narration and the description to its smallest state, he develops “situations,” not events; this lyrical movie possesses an unforgettable charm, and so do the actors in his film. He feeds the spectators’ eyes while simultaneously feeding thoughts and feelings. His films, which could only be a cautious and personal meditation, touch us directly, because they relate to a hurt love, to solitude, to a deep unhappiness; all with death present.” – ARTS – Gilbert Guez

“Freed film” INDIAN UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOOMINGTONThe films When Love Has Gone and Days greatly shook Yugoslav socialist cinematography because they were the first films that’s didn’t portray propaganda. Alexander Petrovic was called by the western press “the voice of new Yugoslav cinema.” The Yugoslav press spoke of occidental decadence and collusion with the west. Petrovic’s new style bothers people. Alexander Petrovic did not expect to film a feature film easily. He returned to his documentaries and short films, and treated them with a poetic modernity.

Olga Vujadinović

Alexander Petrovic about cinema:

« It was never my goal to create something preconceived, but to express what I was feeling.

Sometimes a photograph or a row of trees can be of better use than 5,000 replies. Why would a character’s psychology be better explained through a face or a word. Facial expressions is overrated. I always start from an experience that touched and inspired me, and I search for the solution in the materials I use. We can transpose a subject literally, for example a breakup between two characters; but we must live it subjectively for a rationalist construction harmonizes with it.

I do not make a film about one actor, not even about the character he plays, but on an idea or an emotion.

For me, it is essential that a film today be sincere and true, a confession of sorts, a picture of life from one’s own eyes, a part of the modern man’s conscience.

There are no lies in art. Art knows only truth. We are not judges, nor are we prophets or propagandists.

… The logical evolution of cinematographic art and the film market push us to make simultaneously artistic and commercial films, which I can assure you is extremely complicated. I think that it is crucial, in the context of global cinematography, to separate the dilettante exhibitionism from true poetic adventure. When we will have succeeded in filtering these concepts, we will have a significantly more artistic cinematography, and the public will grow accordingly. “

1962 Aleksandar Petrovic on the shooting of Days

Eclisse’s insinuation:

“My films When Love Has Gone and Days were screened last year during my retrospective at La Rochelle (1986). During a very animated press conference, Marcel Martin asked me if these two films were filmed under the influence of Czech cinema, and if I had seen Czech films prior to filming (Forman, Passek etc.). I responded that I had not had the opportunity to see these films prior to filming because those Czech films had not yet been produced at that point in time. Those cinematographers could have possibly seen my films, but it was impossible for me to have seen theirs. Today, I don’t want to talk about whether they have seen my films or not. But it is certain that I could not have seen their films in 1961 (the year of the filming if When Love Has Gone) since their movies were filmed in 1963. This resembles the Antonioni story and the insinuation that When Love Has Gone was inspired by Eclisse (Eclipse). That film was also made later (1962)… And remember that the scenario for When Love Has Gone was written in 1959. A.P.